There may be claims that YouTube’s new demonetization bots are just being selectively random, picking out videos to demonetize based on tags and headlines, but after some anti-SJW videos were first targeted for demonetization a lot of people became skeptical about how “random” YouTube’s policy bots actually are. Well, it turns out they’re not quite as random as you may have been led to believe.

Verified YouTuber Computing Forever recently did a video about the new enforcement of YouTube’s year-old policy regarding their ability to demonetize videos based on a vague list of rules. He put the video together while he was on vacation.

According to Computing Forever’s Dave Cullen, a few of his videos have been hit with YouTube’s new enforcement policy, proving that while they may have claimed to Kotaku that they’ve always been enforcing their standards, some YouTubers are showing that this hasn’t always been the case.

During the 17 minute video you can check out below, Cullen talks about a new network called Minds.com that he and various other YouTubers and content creators are trying to get off the ground.

But the real news is that he briefly showcases his video manager where it’s revealed that three of his videos have been hit with demonetization; one of which includes a video entitled “4 Reasons Not To Vote For Hillary Clinton”, which was published on August 10th, 2016.

As you can see in the images below, the video does not have ads (no yellow markers on the timeline) and is not eligible for monetization.

Now one thing that helped make people both frightened and comforted was that The Young Turks were supposedly hit… hundreds of their videos demonetized. Some people consider them to be advocates of the Regressive Left. The news about The Young Turks helped defuse some of the theories that YouTube was only targeting people critical of the Regressive Left, also known as Social Justice Warriors. This led people to believe that both the Left and the Right were being hit in equal manner.

Well, interestingly enough, various videos critical of Donald Trump have not been demonetized. In fact, videos critical of Donald Trump that explain why you should not vote for him are still up and available and fully monetized with ads.

WillNe — who has around the same amount of subscribers as Computing Forever — has a video up entitled “5 Reasons Not To Vote For Donald Trump”, and as you can see in the screenshot below, it’s still fully monetized with ads.

Some of you might be thinking that perhaps they’re only targeting smaller outlets and maybe Computing Forever wasn’t big enough to escape having his critical Hillary Clinton video demonetized. Well, that theory would have worked out had smaller YouTubers like Emmy Ameh Praise ended up on the naughty list and videos like “10 reasons not to vote Donald Trump” were demonetized as well… in which case, it is still monetized. You can see the screenshot below with ads running throughout it… it’s even a Google ad at that.

The thing is, political videos of a rather controversial nature are supposed to be subject for demonetization. To refresh your memory about what’s posted on the Google advertiser support page and what is subject for demonetization, it’s stated…

“Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown”

So why is one video giving people reasons not to vote for Hillary Clinton into the office as the President of the United States demonetized, but a bunch of videos telling people not to vote for Donald Trump are still monetized?

Now as Cullen mentioned in his video at the top of the article, only three of his videos were hit. Surprisingly two of his videos about the Regressive Left are still monetized with ads, as indicated in the screenshots below, which were snapped on September 2nd, 2016.

It’s possible the bots are looking for specific keywords, such as verbs like “vote” and negative words like “not”, parsing headlines, descriptions and tags for names like “Hillary Clinton”. Obviously Cullen’s video(s) contained just the right kind of keywords to trigger the demonetization. Except… that theory falls flat when looking at other videos by other top name YouTubers.

It’s possible that since Cullen’s video critical of Clinton was only posted recently on August 10th, 2016, it may have been subject for quicker scrutiny as opposed to the older videos. Of course, since we don’t specifically know how the bots are parsing videos we can’t know for sure why Cullen’s video was singled out in the algorithm.

Some sites like Kotaku are claiming that this is not censorship, but by stripping people of their livelihood for covering certain topics in certain ways, it is an authoritarian strong-arming of content curation through monetary incentives. In other words, people are less likely to cover content for which they won’t be paid, and if an authority can indirectly stop the spread of content creation or the spread of information by withholding monetary funds, then that still falls within the boundaries of censorship.

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Billy has been rustling Jimmies for years covering video games, technology and digital trends within the electronics entertainment space. The GJP cried and their tears became his milkshake. Need to get in touch? Try the Contact Page.

Yuck. Minds is as bad as Heat Street when it comes to full JavaScript overload.

Mr.Towel

Javascript is the cancer of the Internet.

Hawk Hopper

A day or so before this recent YouTube demonetization controversy, YouTube kept recommending a video to me that had a pair a naked tits in the thumbnail. I have no idea if that video has ads on it or not, but on YouTube there always seems to be people really breaking the rules (fake ass prank channels and such) and then people who didn’t do anything wrong getting pulled down.

Also, which tags, video titles, descriptions are “advertiser friendly” when a video creator is talking about war, politics, the news, crime stories, etc?

fnd

” In other words, people are less likely to cover content for which they won’t be paid, and if an authority can indirectly stop the spread of content creation or the spread of information by withholding monetary funds, then that still falls within the boundaries of censorship.”

Let’s hope the streisand effect kick’s in (in these company assholes)

Smug

The same way you see Facebook and Twitter doing nothing over pro-Jihad content but on the other hand they delete any post/comment that is promoting nationalism, far-right ideals, against (mass) immigration, exposing the truth on sensible subjects, etc.

Mainstream media are afraid of Trump so much because he’s the representation of a status quo that can be broken

C G Saturation

Yeah. Even if you consider the possibility that Trump is just part of the farce, it doesn’t explain why the mainstream media is dumping their facade to go all out with the bullshit. It’s like they are so desperate to stop Trump that they don’t care if they’re exposed as lying pieces of shit.

The mainstream media has always been an extremely useful tool for brainwashing people and spreading misinformation. The stakes must be high for them to jeopardize their position with so much blatantly false news.

Smug

Meanwhile, talking about Clinton’s health is prohibited in medias, and nobody seems to care about all those people who (((mysteriously))) got killed right after they were openly opposed to the Clintons, by pointing out their scandals and corruption.

C G Saturation

I don’t think there’s ever been a presidential candidate that’s been so deeply embroiled in so many blatant scandals, crimes, corruption, murders, health issues, etc.

It’s ridiculous that she’s still running and getting so much support. I know she’s just a puppet for big money, but they could easily have picked someone less f’d up. And it says a lot about how stupid people are that they’re still supporting such a person, regardless of everything.

LurkerJK

I do not think they properly understand the stakes, either because they are stereotypical millennials and have no concept of “losing” or “not having” as they have never experienced it or they are in a fanatical frenzy and believe nothing can go wrong

It probably has a lot of the Dunning-Kurger effect mixed in, i think we can agree that SJWs tend to be a “little” narrow minded and prone to overestimating their abilities and knowledge

anopolis

kotaku says its not censorship huh?…well damn, I know a dog that says he didn’t shit on the carpet. Even if I were some far left hippy commie wad of dookie trash, I’d still have issue with this. Any attempt to destroy the market place of ideas, is a gigantic red flag. You may agree with the tide now, but what if it were to turn on ya? and you’ve went and given up the ability to speak? Its not really censorship?? taking away the ability to make money is nothing more than cowardly oppression. Hillary would approve of that..

durka durka

to be fair mate, they did what we did, they cut off advertisers, you can make what you want you just dont have an incentive for it . They learn from the best.

LurkerJK

It could also be that they first deployed a keyword bot that hit the initial wave (which noticed the clickbaity titles of the turk videos) and at the same time opened a manual demonetization process to “completely impartial, we swear *wink* *wink*” organizations that are cherry picking videos

At least there are two positive things to get out of this, a debate about the legality of using a dominant position online to “shape ideas” without even publicizing the criteria behind it and the creation of competition for the big mega sites like facebook, twitter and youtube

Muten

Still amazed me that people can make a lot of money through the Youtubes.

Keep in mind, websites with NSFW content somehow get less money per hit by ads then ones that dont, isnt that the same thing? i admit knowing very little about this, but is interesting nonetheless

C G Saturation

I recently accidentally found YouTube channels of young Japanese girls/women who just talk about food, makeup or stuff they like, and get 200-700k+ views per video. Must be nice to be able to do that.